Doing Nothing

I’m fooling around not doing anything, which probably means that this is a creative period, although of course you don’t know until afterwards. I think that it is very important to be idle. So I am not ashamed of being idle.

[EN] Doing Nothing is a practice-based research programme where we investigate what happens when we do nothing at all. We carve out time and space to “be,” without expectations or desires for changing or achieving anything in particular. Doing nothing does not mean that we suddenly institute laziness or want to be bored. On the contrary, we find that occasionally bringing the relentless pace of doing to a halt is an essential part of the creative process, bringing a necessary distance, awareness and invigoration both to doing and being.

Motivation

[EN] Stress, Burnout, ADD and pathological anxiety attacks are just a few examples of the contemporary malaise of too much work – too little satisfaction, too much information, too little meaning. As a society we seem to have lost the plot a little… What happened to those promises that democracy and technological innovation would bring about a paradise-like egalitarian society with an abundance of leisure and self-development? Instead we work more, become more stressed and less happy, and suffer from chronic diseases and lack of time. There are numerous studies, methods that have been devised and (re)discovered in an effort to improve the situation. For some people things improve, but generally speaking we're not doing so well. The cultural field – which could provide inspiration for living life creatively – is not doing much better: most of us work more than eight hours a day and and more than five days a week; financial uncertainty and relatively low incomes bring additional pressures; artists are forced to become cultural managers and bureaucrats; etc. How long can we keep going like this? Through FoAM's coaching programme we noticed that the effects of stress in our sector are increasing dangerously. Therefore, we decided to include Doing Nothing as an important part of our artistic programme and daily routine.

Mindfulness/MBSR

In 2010 Maja followed the 8 week course in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction at UZ Brussel with Ineke Vanmulders. In 2011 she followed the course Mindfulness in Communicatie at AZ Antwerpen with Edel Maex. Maja has since used and adapted several mindfulness techniques in FoAM's workshops, meetings, trainings, mentoring and conflict situations.

“why we disconnect matters: We can continue in today’s mode of treating disconnection as a way to recharge and regain productivity, or we can view it as a way to sabotage the addiction tactics of the acceleration-distraction complex that is Silicon Valley. The former approach is reactionary but the latter can lead to emancipation, especially if such acts of refusal give rise to genuine social movements that will make problems of time and attention part of their political agendas - and not just the subject of hand-wringing by the Davos-based spirituality brigades. Hopefully, these movements will then articulate alternative practices, institutions, and designs. If it takes an act of unplugging to figure out how to do it, let’s disconnect indeed. But let us not do it for the sake of reconnecting on the very same terms as before. We must be mindful of all this mindfulness.”

Karma Yoga

Exercise suggestion: Every morning when arriving at FoAM allow yourself to really arrive in the studio by doing something that will help make the place more enjoyable/beautiful/inhabited. For 15-20 minutes forget about workplans and schedules and simply offer a service to the space in which you spend most of your working hours. Look around and see what needs doing: repairs, cleaning, tidying up, gardening, organising, maintenance, moving furninture… Do not worry about the results, just perform your 'selfless service' for twenty minutes without expectations.

This exercise is inspired by two things: the practice of Karma Yoga (discipline of action) and the 20 minutes of 'daily work period' that we were allowed to engage in during the Naikan retreat. It was a great thing to do and the space looked much more cared for after 9 people worked on it for only 20 minutes each day.

Morning ritual

Exercise suggestion: Design a small ritual that would allow you to really 'arrive' at your place of work, without thinking of any past or future actions. Sit down (in a group) and have a 5-10 minute meditation. Sit down and have a cup of tea or coffee in silence, just observing the space. Light incense or an oil burner (if this doesn't disturb others). (etc.)

Regular pauses

In order to keep sufficiently concentrated for eight or more hours a day, it helps to take regular breaks (once every (half) hour for a minute or so).

Stillness Buddy: a small piece of software that freezes the screen for a short period of time and displays a short exercise. “like having a friend that, every now and then, gently reminds you to stop, breathe, center yourself again and then continue.

Meeting rituals

Exercise proposal: Before beginning a meeting, sit together in silence for a few minutes. Become aware of yourself, your moods and expectations. Experience the presence of other people and remind yourself that they might have different moods or expectations, allow yourself to be open to anything that happens.

Purposeless walking

A number of recent books have lauded the connection between walking - just for its own sake - and thinking. But are people losing their love of the purposeless walk?
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27186709

Monotasking

In recent years it has become increasingly apparent that multitasking is quite ineffective and stress inducing – it's akin to an institutionalised and encouraged form of ADD. At FoAM we're experimenting with different approaches to reduce extreme multitasking in the work of individuals and groups.

get work done before checking email

check email only once or twice a day

have blocks of time (for some people this is morning, for others afternoon or evening) dedicated to uninterrupted work

have clear signals (like wearing headphones), or spaces where people can work undisturbed

carve out at least one day per week as a 'silent day', with no meetings and phone calls, where (if possible) people spend time in the library, reading, writing or following other 'silent' pursuits. at FoAM, this has become Silent Thursday.

have a seasonal programming, so that similar projects are worked on at the same time. At the moment we're experimenting with the following rhythm:

in june 2000 elisabeth schimana and markus seidl started with the following mission: “a farming village in upper austria is sought, whose inhabitants are ready to discuss the following questions with us: what does comfort mean? is it comfortable to do nothing? what does it mean to do nothing? who is allowed to do what about doing nothing? the results form seven days of doing nothing. http://www.nichtstun.org/index.html

Homage to Idleness

Over the centuries, the illusion of mastering time through obedience to it came into acceptance. Across Europe, the medieval monastery’s bell tolled as a reminder to eat, sleep and pray. But while there must have been some soul’s release in relinquishing earthly sovereignty to that sound, as the clock’s authority spread, we sealed all the gaps through which curiosity might seep into our days. Curiosity, after all, could lure the susceptible way off track, as the Italian poet Petrarch learned in the spring of 1336, when he famously climbed Mont Ventoux, motivated by “nothing but the desire to see its conspicuous height.” One of the texts he carried along was Saint Augustine’s “Confessions,” detailing the moral dangers of such expeditions, when men “go out to admire the mountains,” or the course of the stars, and therein forget themselves. Chastened, Petrarch made his descent in silence.

Only the Enlightenment redeemed our penchant to while away the hours in wonder. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes called curiosity the “singular passion” separating humans from animals. Even better, it was “a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.” What pleasure we might know by letting curiosity have its way with us for an hour or two.

The Right to Laziness

The right to laziness, once claimed by Paul Lafargue in Le Droit à la Paresse (1880), is perhaps more topical than ever. We live a time and age when competitiveness is the categorical imperative in the name of which businesses, towns, regions, countries and continents are set against each other. A time and age when business people are proclaimed guardian angels because of jobs to be created or to be saved. In such a time and age to claim the right to laziness seems like a betrayal, an appeal to apathy, almost blasphemy! - Isabelle Stengers

Doing nothing experiences

“Sometimes out here in nature you have days when its very quiet you know.. An you get these moments out in the forest when nothing makes any sound, when nothing moves, not even a leaf of grass. These are moments.. its really kind of weird you know.. when just for a moment you start to doubt if time has stopped. You get this weird feeling that you are trapped in.. in something like photograph.” Linas Ramanauskas of Nida Art Colony

“After a week of Vipasana we'd been sitting inside meditating all the time. On the last day I went out behind the conference centre into the garden. And after that meditating the birds in the garden just hipped past me really close. They weren't scared at all.” Cocky

Bored, on Mars

A trip to Mars, with its invisible technology and vast, unprecedented distance from home, could estrange or alienate a crew to an unprecedented degree. Such a distance could produce an entirely new kind of boredom, impossible to imagine on Earth.

Chronesthesia

Time Travel in the Brain: What are you doing when you aren't doing anything at all?

This dark network (which comprises regions in the frontal, parietal and medial temporal lobes) is off when we seem to be on, and on when we seem to be off. If you climbed into an MRI machine and lay there quietly, waiting for instructions from a technician, the dark network would be as active as a beehive. But the moment your instructions arrived and your task began, the bees would freeze and the network would fall silent. When we appear to be doing nothing, we are clearly doing something. But what?

Paul Lafargue 'The Right To Be Lazy'

“And meanwhile the proletariat, the great class embracing all the producers of civilized nations, the class which in freeing itself will free humanity from servile toil and will make of the human animal a free being, – the proletariat, betraying its instincts, despising its historic mission, has let itself be perverted by the dogma of work. Rude and terrible has been its punishment. All its individual and social woes are born of its passion for work.”

Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy. – Lessing

theaternyx*

“in october 2013 we had a great experience with our colleagues during one week of (nearly) doing nothing. we were creating a design for the week with some simple structures and tools to provide a frame for the group. after a time together in the morning with feldenkrais, breakfast and coffee, we started each day with a walk. walks in a special area - the east of linz; harbor, industrial zone,…
after the walks we were guests at our host's places. also these hosts, sometimes a group, sometimes a single person didn't know what we were exactly up to. the only information given before was, that a group of people will come who will do nothing. and this situation was one of the “big surprises” for us. it brought all the participants into a very open, concentrated, lidless position. it opened a field of being in contact with people - some of whom you know, others you don't - in another way.

all the people from our group and also our hosts were invited as the entire person they are. we were together not for work, nor to discuss something in particular; not to find anything out, not with a concrete theme or issue and nobody had to be a specialist for whatever …
all the people were asked to be only themselves. they were not asked to participate because of their profession (artist, performer,…) or because they were particularely successful in anything. all these things weren't important for this coming and being together.
and still, in the evenings of those days it felt as if the group had become larger and larger and our experience was that the time together with these people was so inspiring, a respectful learning from each other by doing nothing together.”

Space Out

A few weeks ago, on a Sunday afternoon, about 70 people gathered at Ichon Hangang Park in Seoul, South Korea, to do absolutely nothing. There was not a smartphone in sight, no texting or taking selfies, and no one rushing to get anywhere.

The crowd was taking part in South Korea's annual Space Out Competition, a contest to see who can stare off into space the longest without losing focus. WoopsYang, the visual artist who created the event in 2014, said it's designed to highlight how much people have been overworking their brains and how much they stand to gain by taking a break.

“I was suffering from burnout syndrome at the time, but would feel extremely anxious if I was sitting around doing nothing, not being productive in one way or another,” she told VICE. Eventually, she realized she wasn't alone. “I thought to myself, We would all feel better about doing nothing if we did nothing together as a group.”

For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

—from Extravagaria

Become the sky

Inside this new love,
die.

Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.

Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.

You’re covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side.
Die,
and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running from silence.